School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Swanmore College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 10 families who named Swanmore College as their first choice did not get a place: 248 put it first and 238 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Hampshire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 12 years of official figures.

10

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

248 first preferences for 262 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Swanmore College

There is no published appeal success rate for Swanmore College, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Hampshire as a whole and cover every state-funded school in the authority. Anyone quoting you odds for a named school is making them up.

Across Hampshire, 34.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 310 of 903 appeals heard in 2024–2026. The England figure is 20.1%.

A panel is not deciding whether you want the school. It decides whether the admission arrangements were lawful and correctly applied, and then whether the harm to your child of not being admitted outweighs the harm to the school of going over its published number. Cases built on preference rather than on those two questions are the ones that fail.

See the full appeal figures for Hampshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Hampshire ones. Whichever school you are appealing for, the panel works through the same two stages and is required to ignore the same things.

How contested this school has been

Swanmore College turned first-choice families away in 6 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Swanmore College, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 0.95 per place 255 first choices 268 places 2016/17 1.02 per place 275 first choices 270 places 2017/18 0.97 per place 244 first choices 251 places 2018/19 0.97 per place 288 first choices 296 places 2019/20 1.03 per place 279 first choices 270 places 2020/21 0.98 per place 262 first choices 266 places 2021/22 0.93 per place 253 first choices 271 places 2022/23 1.11 per place 313 first choices 282 places 2023/24 1.13 per place 298 first choices 263 places 2024/25 1.14 per place 299 first choices 262 places 2025/26 1.04 per place 267 first choices 257 places 2026/27 0.95 per place 248 first choices 262 places
First preferences per place at Swanmore College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 248 first preferences for 262 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Swanmore College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 268 255 251 0.95
2016/17 270 275 260 1.02
2017/18 251 244 244 0.97
2018/19 296 288 281 0.97
2019/20 270 279 255 1.03
2020/21 266 262 256 0.98
2021/22 271 253 253 0.93
2022/23 282 313 278 1.11
2023/24 263 298 258 1.13
2024/25 262 299 253 1.14
2025/26 257 267 245 1.04
2026/27 262 248 238 0.95

Places offered

262

in 2026/27

Named first choice

248

415 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

96%

238 of 248

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 262 offers

Was the school full?

This is the question a panel spends most of its time on. At the second stage of an appeal it weighs the harm to the school of taking an extra child against the harm to your child of being refused — and how much room the school has is the heart of that. The admission authority has to show harm over and above the fact that its published number has been reached, so it is fair to ask what the specific harm is — how the second stage actually works.

Places, Years 7 to 11

1,350

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,335

98.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

15

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

excluded from the figures above

Read this before you use these numbers

These are whole-school figures across Years 7 to 11, not the year group you are appealing for. A school can hold spare places in its upper years while the year you want is genuinely full, and the panel will have the year-group numbers in front of it. So this does not show that Swanmore College has room for your child.

They are also the school's own reported capacity, as at 1 May 2025 — a year behind the application figures further up this page, and a description rather than a finding.

On the published figures Swanmore College reported 15 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.9% of capacity. That is worth asking about — but ask it as a question, not an assertion. A panel will want the figure for the year group in question, and the school may have a good answer about staffing, rooms or timetabling.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Swanmore College from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,350 places 1,284 on roll 2010/11 1,350 places 1,279 on roll 2011/12 1,350 places 1,253 on roll 2012/13 1,350 places 1,232 on roll 2013/14 1,350 places 1,200 on roll 2014/15 1,350 places 1,178 on roll 2015/16 1,350 places 1,192 on roll 2016/17 1,350 places 1,204 on roll 2017/18 1,350 places 1,208 on roll 2018/19 1,350 places 1,263 on roll 2020/21 1,350 places 1,303 on roll 2021/22 1,350 places 1,317 on roll 2022/23 1,350 places 1,366 on roll 2023/24 1,350 places 1,323 on roll 2024/25 1,350 places 1,335 on roll
Whole-school figures including any sixth form, as at 1 May each year. 2019/20 is missing because the 2020 School Capacity survey was cancelled.

Department for Education, School capacity, school-level file, 2024/25. Published under the Open Government Licence.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Hampshire

Postcode SO32 2RB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 116424).

Other contested secondary schools in Hampshire

Applications and offers: Department for Education, Primary and secondary school applications and offers, school-level file, 2026/27. Appeal figures: Admission appeals in England. Both under the Open Government Licence.